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With Galerie Simon, Paris, 1921 (stock no. 6720, photo no. 1502); Hans Simon, Berlin, by 1928 and possibly still in c. 1931 [1]. Jacques Zoubaloff (1876-1941), Paris, by 1935 [2]; sale, Zoubaloff Collection, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, November 27-28, 1935, no. 127 (illus.); purchased by Jean Crotti [3]; sold to Louise and Walter C. Arensberg, Los Angeles, through Marcel Duchamp (Crotti's brother-in-law) as agent, probably 1935 [4]; gift to PMA, 1950.
1. Hans Simon is listed as the owner in Carl Einstein, Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, 2nd ed., 1928, no. 308, and 3rd ed., 1931, no. 352.
2. Included in the Galerie des Beaux-Arts, Paris, exhibition "Les créateurs du cubisme," catalogue by Raymond Cogniat, 1935, no. 10, lent by Zoubaloff. Zoubaloff formed most of his Cubist collection in the 1920's (see Douglas Cooper, The Essential Cubism, London, 1983, pp. 28-31).
3. A news clipping in the Getty's copy of the auction catalog gives "M[onsieur] Crotti" as the buyer. The artist Jean Crotti was married to Marcel Duchamp's sister Suzanne.
4. According to provenance notes he made in 1951 (dated Sept. 8, 1951, PMA, Arensberg Archives), Duchamp purchased the work for the Arensbergs at an auction in 1937. As no other reference to the auction sale of a Braque resembling this one can be found for the period 1935-40, it is likely that he was mistaken and that he and Crotti bought the painting two years earlier, at the 1935 Drouot auction.